


Head Down, Shoulders Squared

by JauntyHako



Category: Stargate - All Media Types
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Lorne's Life In the Closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27148909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JauntyHako/pseuds/JauntyHako
Summary: Lorne couldn't be blamed for not realising he was gay until he was surrounded by a lot of fit young men in uniform.Or: How Major Lorne came out to Colonel Sheppard.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Head Down, Shoulders Squared

**Author's Note:**

> Set within the show's timeline, ergo prior to the repeal of DADT.
> 
> Edit: It has since come to my attention that Lorne is actually Air Force, not Marines (in my defense, both are deployed on Atlantis, and I just figured Lorne for the latter) so let's just call this a headcanon.  
> Also, the thing about Lorne having picked up painting during deployment rather than from his mother is intentional. I always preferred thinking of Lorne as a working class kid who appreciates the finer things in life to contrast with Sheppard as the upper class kid who prefers footballs and ferris wheels to art galleries.

Lorne couldn't be blamed for not realising he was gay until he was surrounded by a lot of fit young men in uniform.  
Every boy exaggerated about being into girls. Every boy lied about having had their first time. If no one ever caught his eye, female or otherwise, that was to be expected since all the hot girls (and boys) traditionally went to other schools, usually in Canada.  
When he told people they'd call him a late bloomer, but Lorne preferred to think of himself as focused on other things. He hadn't gone looking for girls, and especially not for boys, and they hadn't come looking for him.  
In school he'd been shy, good at sports but not popular because of it, liked well enough by his classmates but not likely to win prom king. Other kids his age would have been bothered by it, and some of his friends did try to push him into the limelight, give him the validation and attention they felt he deserved.  
He ducked out of these efforts as gracefully as possible. His accomplishments didn't need an audience, they were for him alone. He'd lived his life so far by keeping his head down and his shoulders squared, and the military promised to pay him for that attitude.

The next thing he knew he was surrounded by 73 other young men, holding onto their naked legs while they did crunches in tiny shorts for their PFTs.  
Lorne had always thought sex wasn't that important to him. Now he realised it was, at the worst possible time.  
If it hadn't been for the constant drills and discipline, he wouldn't have made it past the first three weeks. Rather than go insane over his newfound need and inability to get one of these guys into bed, he threw himself into his training. Lorne kept his eyes front, every motion regulated, every thought appropriate because it had been put there by someone else.

Swim Week was torture in and of itself. No tiny shorts were involved, but that didn't matter since the fit young men were now also dripping wet and blinking at him from underneath wet eyelashes. Decades later he still fueled his fantasies with these memories, always guilty and a little bit ashamed.  
Lorne kept going, pushed himself to become harder and stronger than he believed himself capable of. He went through the Crucible and sat with his fellow recruits at the warrior's breakfast, gorging himself on steak and chocolate, taking a break for the first time in almost three months. His DI sat just across from him, allowing for informal talk and Lorne had the sudden petty urge to tell him. That all the 'I'm making men out of you faggots' he threw at them had only succeeded in making him both.  
He didn't, of course, because of the regulation. And because he was surrounded by a few dozen men who wouldn't appreciate learning they'd shared both sleeping and personal space with a gay man.  
Training was meant to instill a sense of brotherhood in the recruits, the unshakeable idea that your platoon closer than family, more important than yourself. Lorne felt that, but always through a thin barrier. Everytime he looked at one of them like he wasn't supposed to, everytime he forced himself to keep his eyes front even when no one had given the order, everytime the word 'gay' fell, that barrier came up. It was called Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and it both protected and fenced him in. No one ever asked, not even as a joke, and he took some solace in that fact. He never told, not even his family when they came to watch him graduate.  
On that day, at least, the issue of his interest in men became insignificant compared to the pride he felt upon finishing his training. Next to his fellow Marines, feeling shiny and new in his dress uniform, he was a warrior hewn from marble, the pride of America, capable of protecting his brothers and everything he held dear.  
He could look into his father's eyes and tell he made him proud, could see his mother looking for a fleck of dust to brush off his uniform and finding him immaculate. He wondered, for the briefest moment, how they'd react if he came out to them. If his father would react any differently to him than to the gay men on the streets and on television. If his mother would smile and embrace him.  
Deep down he knew the answer.  
He also knew the Marine Corps would always come first. The military was important to him, beyond having a job and graduating college It helped him realise the kind of man he wanted to be.  
At 17 he resigned himself to the fact that his newly discovered sexuality would remain buried for the rest of his life.

Lorne kept his head down and shoulders squared all the way through college and his first deployments. He settled into a life in the military, a career he would keep until they didn't want him anymore.  
Deployment was when he lived, even in the boring stretches between action. Coming home from deployment, to a small flat barely furnished was like being put on ice, and there he waited until the military thawed him out again.  
In his small home town everyone knew him, most everyone liked him, but he didn't have any friends. Friendships were reserved for other soldiers he met on deployment.

Lorne swept sand, an endless Sisyphos task in the middle of Syria, lost in the monotony of the task, fully prepared to do this until the sun burned out, when one of said friends came to brighten his day.  
“Guess what came in the mail.”  
He looked up, the harsh sunlight blinding him to Sergeant Kepler's face but he would have recognised that voice anywhere. Kepler's voice had never really come out of puberty. He was constantly hoarse, and his pitch always went up at the end of a sentence, an acoustic yo-yo effect Lorne found either annoying or endearing, depending on how hungry and tired he was.  
“Your mom's cookies?” he asked hopefully.  
Kepler held the box up triumphantly.  
“My mom's cookies! Today we feast like kings.”  
For Kepler's mom's baking Lorne would have happily crawled through a minefield. Lorne's own family sent the occasional care package, but they contained extra toothbrushes and sanitiser, practical things from his practically minded parents, rather than delicious ginger nut cookies and mouthwatering apple turnovers.  
Making friends with Kepler had been worth it just for that. Although Lorne would have been friends with him even if he got worn underwear in his care packages. He liked Kepler, the first guy he'd made genuine friends with since before middle school. Liked the way Kepler always got jokes thirty seconds after everybody else but laughed all the louder. The way he could talk for hours about comics and guns, but not much else. The way Lorne suspected sometimes that Kepler was only pretending to be a simple grunt, not worth paying attention to.

The wait until his shift's end had never been longer, his duties never more boring, than on days like these.  
By the time he reached their little corner in the USO tent, Kepler was already there, talking to Becker.  
Becker was Kepler's friend, but he wasn't Lorne's. He was older than them, made rude jokes toeing the line between tasteless and offensive, and constantly complained about his work. All soldiers complained, but Becker did it with such frequency Lorne had more than once gotten up and asked what he was doing in the military in the first place. He had no idea what Kepler saw in the guy, except that he looked at Becker in the way Lorne sometimes wished someone would look at him.  
He sat, let himself be drawn into the conversation, nibbling on a peanut butter cookie. He laughed at Kepler's jokes, grinned pained at Becker's, and for an hour or so life was as close to perfect as it ever got.  
Then Kepler got up to get the comic his mother had sent in addition to the cookies, to prove some kind of point Lorne admitted not getting. Becker leaned over across the space Kepler had vacated and said in a low voice: “He made a pass at me last night.”  
Lorne's reaction was as routine as field-stripping a gun.  
“You're crazy. Kepler's as straight as any of us.”  
Usually that was enough. Every now and then gossip went around about someone being queer, and Lorne had practiced his response until it came naturally. As long as he didn't sound defensive, caught, or overly supportive, he was safe.  
But Becker insisted, tried to rope Lorne into gossip, only giving up when Kepler returned. But he kept throwing them glances throughout the evening, and Lorne wondered how much truth there'd really been to Becker's claim.

He learned, against his will, when Becker made a formal complaint against Kepler for sexual harrassment. He claimed Kepler had come onto him and when Kepler was given a chance to explain himself, he didn't deny it.  
Lorne kept his distance the moment he heard. People knew he'd been friends with Kepler, and his mind was on damage control long before he thought of what would happen to his friend.  
There was an inquiry, Kepler pulled from duty, although Lorne didn't know if they'd gone so far as to look him up. He hadn't seen him since they shared his mom's cookies.  
His CO came by one day to ask Lorne if he'd noticed strange behaviour in Kepler.  
He said “no, sir”, but he didn't defend Kepler either, feared going down with him. If they kicked him out for being gay, he'd never be able to look his family in the eye again.  
A small part of him wanted to say “sir, I'm gay too” and take some kind of stand, imagining a Spartacus style show of support from his company that would topple the age old traditions of the military.  
He might as well believe aliens existed.  
His CO took his statement back to his superiors. Not long after Kepler was discharged and Lorne never saw him again. 

The time he used to spend with Kepler turned to a yawning void, accusing eyes hidden in that nothingness  
He took to painting just to fill the time. Not at first because he had a passion for art, but because the materials were available and the space free. It was only later that he found he liked it, and kept it up even when others poked fun at him for being a sensitive soul. It was a risk he took, the leap between 'sensitive' and 'queer' not a large one in the mind of the average soldier, but even on deployment he made sure to find time for it. It was as small a rebellion as he could get away with, and he told himself it was enough.

Lorne became an officer, somewhere between then and now, received his commission as a Lieutenant, and had been promoted to Captain when a General invited him and a few other guys into a classified briefing, gave them all NDAs to sign and, when they did, told them about the Stargate Program.  
The Stargate. A device built by some ancient civilisation capable of transporting a person from earth to any number of planets in their solar system, many of them inhabited. There were aliens as strange and inhuman as things that lived at the bottom of the deepest sea. Starships that crossed the expanse of stars in weeks. Weapons that fired bolts of energy, people who grew their slave masters in their guts and fought for freedom, machines that replicated themselves. Little grey men named Thor and Freyr and Hermiod. 

For three weeks between that briefing and his transfer to Cheyenne Mountain, Lorne was utterly convinced it was all a joke. Some kind of elaborate hazing ritual for the new guys, a prank pulled by the Pentagon, something other than what it sounded like. That aliens were real and Lorne was going to see them and defend them from other, evil, aliens. 

He did see an alien, on his first offworld mission, and was only a little bit disappointed that he looked human. That had been explained to him, too. Something about these Goa'uld abducting people and dropping them off all over the galaxy.  
This alien human (or human alien? Extraterrestrial terrestrial?) offered Lorne's team to stay for some kind of thanksgiving ritual as thanks for helping them dig a new well. Seeing no harm in it, and informing SGC that they'd be staying late, he agreed and let his people relax a spell, breathe the air that was the same but different, eating food that was like earth food a little to the left.  
They had not-quite-salad and almost-steak, washing it down with could-be-beer, when the man who'd invited them struck up eye contact with Lorne, and winked.  
Lorne shrank back, years of staying under the radar keeping him from an explosive reaction. He turned away, laughed at a joke one of the women nearby had made, too forced and a little too shrill. His team exchanged glances, but the offworlders remained oblivious.  
“Are you married, Major?” the man asked, perfectly friendly.  
Lorne took a sip of his hypothetical beer to play for time, set down the glass carefully before he answered.  
“Uh, no. Never had the time.”  
Someone snorted, and he wondered if it had been someone on his own team.  
“Or the inclination?”  
Sweat beaded at his neck as all eyes at the table focused on him. How did this guy know? Maybe he meant to embarrass him, probing him like this in front of everyone. A test, to see how he'd react.  
Lorne averted eye contact, pretended to wipe away a spot from his tactical vest.  
“I don't know what you mean,” he said, praying these people would get the idea.  
They did. The man stopped bothering him, was in fact just a little more polite than he'd been before, a little bit more distanced.  
Lorne breathed a sigh of relief, tinged with just a hint of disappointment. If he'd been one of the scientists, he could have flirted back without fear of repercussion, could have checked out the guy who was apparently interested in him. He might have allowed himself to have a look, nothing more.  
As it was, he made sure to always be in plain sight of his team, knowing full well what his perceived disappearance would do to the rumour mill. 

Lorne and his team returned to earth a few hours later. The rumours returned with them.  
It took three days for Lorne to find out about them, and by then it was too late. He overheard two soldiers talking in the hallway, about Lorne making out with another man. About Lorne leering at other guys in the locker rooms. About what he wanted to do to other men or have done to him. He kept his head down and shoulders squared, hoping against hope that as long as he didn't give fuel to the rumours, they would die out by themselves.  
It was only a matter of time until General Hammond got wind of the rumours and asked him to stay after a mission debrief.  
“Son, it has come to my attention that there have been certain rumours going around.”  
Lorne froze.  
_Eyes front_ , he told himself, _don't even twitch_.  
“Sir?”  
“I'm not going to ask whether they hold true or not. In fact, I'm not allowed to ask. What I want to know is if this will affect your ability to command your team.”  
Only an idiot would say yes. He'd be transferred, or given base duty, condemning him to spend the rest of his career guarding doors.  
He wondered what would happen if he said the rumours were true. He didn't peg the General for the overtly homophobic type. And he'd proven he was willing to skirt or outright ignore regulations for his people. He _wanted_ to tell the General, who'd been fair to him, had earned Lorne's respect for more than his rank.  
Instead he said: “No, sir. It won't.”  
General Hammond nodded, just a hint of pity in the twist of his lips. 

The rumours went away eventually, replaced by other gossip, and Lorne went back to leading his teams offworld on mission after mission.  
The years at the SGC quickly turned into the best of his life. He was at his peak, ideal physical condition and accumulated experience mixing in a way they never had before and never would again.  
Even better, he wasn't constantly surrounded by war.  
Sure, earth had its enemies, ones he was proud to fight in its defense, but those were the exception. Most weeks he escorted scientists, made contact with offworlders, or his personal favourite, explored new planets.  
He never got over that little kick of excitement that came from going through a gate to an address they'd never dialed before, wondering what he'd find. From ancient ruins filled with booby traps to earth-like societies, he'd seen just about anything. 

Anything except Atlantis, that was.  
News of the expedition made rounds even before the information was officially released. Their scientists didn't even know if it was possible, but the higher-ups passed up no chance to drown the program in as much bureaucratic bullshit as possible. They made up regulations for a place they didn't know existed, for an expedition that might never embark. The other people on base, military and civilian personnel alike, had the time of their lives mocking these new regulations which covered everything from potentially important things like security protocols to miniscule details like how and where they were to eat.  
“Listen to this,” Richards said over breakfast one morning, reading directly from the copy of the charter printed last night. By now it would have changed again. “ _If hermetically sealed environs are available, flour and dairy products not native to the planet must be unpacked and prepared there. If sealed rooms are not viable, steps should be taken to limit potential contamination._ Who comes up with this shit?”  
“That's nothing,” Connor said, with her mouth full. “Have you heard about the faggot clause?”  
Richards laughed, Lorne went to high alert. He kept his voice carefully neutral, pretending to be only casually interested when he said: “Oh?”  
He was incapable of more, swallowing past a growing lump in his throat. His team had never said anything about these rumours, but this could be a trap.  
“Yeah, they put it in last night, I heard one of the suits talk about it like he's proud of it. There, Richards, Chapter 3.”

_Chapter 3 Section 7 Paragraph 1 Addendum 2.  
Each member of the Atlantis military contingent is free to express and practice their sexual orientation at their discretion. _

No more Don't Ask Don't Tell. No fraternisation clauses either. If the bureaucrats in charge of the expedition had their way, it'd be a free for all.  
That's how Richards and Connor saw it, anyway. Lorne participated in their mocking of Addendum 2 as little as possible. Self preservation running on autopilot, as the rest of him got caught in a torrent of fear, doubt, and possibility.  
He could apply to the expedition. Almost everyone in the SGC had done it, and he had a good chance of getting in, with his recent promotion to Major. But if he did it now, his team would know why.  
“Atlantis, the porn parody of the SGC. Every queer from here to Mars is going to be there,” Richards said just then, proving his worries correct.  
Anyone who applied from here on out, including him, would be assumed to have done so because of Addendum 2. And if he didn't get in, he'd be stuck here.

But if he did ...  
As Lorne drove home that night, he wondered if he could have his cake and eat it, too. A military career and the possibility of a relationship. Doing the thing he loved and then going home to doing the guy he loved.  
He laughed in the emptiness of his car, half mad and all wrecked. Almost twenty years of ignoring what he couldn't dismiss, and hiding what he couldn't ignore. He'd build a construct of himself that could survive, even thrive in the only kind of life he'd ever wanted to live.  
He'd been fine.  
Now he pulled into his driveway with a storm brewing in his head, years of shame and paranoia threatening to come crashing down for nothing but the smallest possibility of change.  
If he got in, he could tell his CO that he was gay, right to his face, without fear. They couldn't discharge him, couldn't transfer him, couldn't do shit to him.  
If he got in, and met an alien who winked at him and asked if he was married, he could wink back, flirt a little even if nothing would ever come of it. He could look at other members of this expedition and wonder if they were queer, too, with interest and hope, rather than trepidation and sorrowful empathy.  
What a life that would be, he thought, if he got in.  
But if he didn't ... 

When Lorne had first joined the military, he'd done so because their values resonated with him. When he learned the Marines' core values, he'd taken them to heart, vowing to make them a part of the very fabric of his soul. Knowing, even then, that he would never be able to completely live up to them.  
Honour meant little when Lorne had lied and deceived to keep his sexuality hidden, when he had stood by and let Kepler be discharged without sticking up for him, silently glad to be spared.  
Courage failed him everytime he wanted to damn the rules to hell and tell someone that him being gay didn't mean he kicked ass any less than the rest of them.  
He supposed he could claim commitment at least, for having cut away parts of himself to serve his company and country. But even that was the mark of a necessary evil, for nature having saddled him with the one condition the military hated almost as much as it hated the enemy.  
Addendum 2 could change all that. He could be truthful, and courageous, and still remain committed to the life he'd chosen. It was a risk, but Lorne had taken risks before.

He applied in secret, knowing it wouldn't stay that way. General Hammond implied he might get a position as the second in command to Colonel Sumner. It would be a step up, another one since his service during offworld missions had merited his promotion. For weeks Lorne spent his downtime eagerly anticipating the letter that would tell him if he'd be a part of the Atlantis expedition.  
Then he got the letter. Lorne stared down at the simple white paper, one paragraph only.  
He didn't get in.  
It was only a matter of time until his application would leak to the soldiers on base, and not much more to get the rumour mill running again.  
Through the gossip Lorne learned who he had to thank for being rejected. His position had been all but signed and sealed, when some other Major was brought in on short notice, some guy from the Air Force who'd never even been through the Stargate. Who didn't know what it was until they found some genetic quirk in his blood that let him use Ancient technology. Lorne supposed he could understand that. He knew all about accidents of nature.

Despite never having met him, Lorne hated Major Sheppard for a full year until a new recruitment wave went out. He'd been right that his application wouldn't stay secret, and that people would know why he'd applied.  
Overnight people's perception of him changed. Before he'd been reasonably well liked, got along with his team, climbed up the career ladder. All that vanished as his secret got out, made way for suspicion, hearsay, and rejection.  
He started eating his meals alone. When his friends went to parties, he stopped asking why he hadn't been invited. Kept his head down and his shoulders squared as whispers and sneers followed him through the stargate.  
General Hammond still pitied him, but he never said a word. Don't Ask, even though Lorne had all but Told. 

Then Atlantis came into Earth's reach again, and with it a list of required replacements and additional personnel. A spot had been reserved for Lorne, to be the second in command to the same, now promoted, guy who'd stolen his job the first time around.  
Lorne agreed immediately, because everything was better than staying on base.  
He was still determined to dislike Colonel Sheppard, and kept a professional distance between them for most of their flight to the Pegasus galaxy.  
Easy enough since Lorne spent most of it staring at the little red dot that represented their ship on the map between galaxies, slowly inching towards Atlantis. Within a few days he'd leave earth jurisdiction behind, it and with it the need to hide the part of himself that had haunted him for his entire adult life.  
“You know, the view from the observation deck is even better.”  
Lorne straightened up, saw that Colonel Sheppard was in his civvies, and relaxed again.  
“I'm sure it is, sir,” he said non-commitally, hands clasped behind his back, shoulders squared, eyes front. The little red dot jumped forward a quarter of an inch, representing hundreds of lightyears travelled.  
The Colonel huffed.  
“You'd think I'd bite your heads off with the way you guys've been acting.”  
“You _are_ our CO, sir. None of us have worked with you before.”  
Sheppard shrugged, an awkward little thing that immediately endeared him to Lorne. His resolve to dislike him slipped with every moment he actually interacted with the guy.  
“Yeah well, I'm sure we'll be best of friends in no time. In the meantime, I need your help. You know about Sergeant Jaworowska and Dr Haver?”  
The top ranked hand-to-hand combat specialists at Cheyenne Mountain, newly transferred to Atlantis. Their tag team record was unbeaten, something that used to be a point of embarrassment for all the men who'd challenged them. Lorne, despite getting top marks in his own tests, had never gone up against them.  
“I'm aware,” Lorne said.  
“Great. I heard you're supposed to be good. Let's go kick their asses. Please?”  
He wondered if Sheppard would still be so eager to ask for his help once he knew he was gay.  
“You made a bet?”  
“One I can't afford to lose,” Colonel Sheppard implored him.  
Lorne couldn't help but laugh. He was beginning to warm up to him, thought he might like him not just as a CO but as a person, too. Maybe he should get it over with, tell him now and see if his time on Atlantis would be a continuation from last year. But if Colonel Sheppard turned out to be less than accepting, it could come back to bite him. The Daedalus was US territory, DADT still applied, if only on a technicality.  
“Sure, sir,” he said instead and followed Colonel Sheppard to the gym.  
Just a few more days.

The Daedalus was a bustle of activity as it entered Atlantis' orbit. Whereas Lorne and the rest of the soldiers had been ready to go from the first announcements, knowing exactly where they should be and when, the scientists provided chaos. They ran back and forth, looking for their books, their laptops, and the dozens of other things they'd left lying around. McKay came by twice asking Sheppard if he'd seen the charger he was holding as he spoke. Caldwell had wisely decided to beam the military complement down first, who stood packed and ready like they were supposed to.  
Lorne blinked against the bright light, the sensation of being both squeezed and pulled apart by now almost familiar as he and the first group of new people were beamed down to the city.  
One moment he was on US soil, the next his feet touched Atlantis, the city where Addendum 2 officially applied.  
Colonel Sheppard, next to him, grinned expectantly at him. He probably hoped that Lorne, like the other soldiers, would be taken aback at the sight of the city, unable to tear their eyes away for a few seconds.  
But Lorne was looking straight at his CO. His heart hammered in his chest, his entire last year at the SGC looming like a promise for the future over his head.  
“Sir, I'm gay,” he said, shoulders squared, head high.  
Whatever Colonel Sheppard had expected, this was not it. He looked around, as if someone or something might provide context. No one offered any.  
“Congratulations?” he said finally, clearly not knowing how to respond.  
“Thank you, sir.” Lorne smiled and felt his heart getting lighter when the Colonel reciprocated. “Been sitting on that for a while.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've always headcanoned Lorne as an out gay man, but up until now I wasn't really inspired to write something to that effect. Now the plot bunny's bitten and I kind of want to incorporate him more into my Post Season 5 AU and pair him off with someone cute.


End file.
